A Passion for "Zero Waste Lunches" and Living a Plastic Free lifestyle.

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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

First Day of Kindergarten!

Today I dropped my 5 1/2 year old daughter to her first day of kindergarten. I'm excited and melancholy at the same time. Being a natural foods chef and holistic health counselor, I wanted to make something fun and different for her. Alas, she insisted on a sandwich, boring for me but exciting for her. She has gluten sensitivity so we rarely make sandwiches. Luckily there are a lot of gluten free breads on the market. We like the Trader Joe's brand multi-grain, gluten free bread but it is a little firmer/dryer than regular bread.

The school instructed us to pack a snack that is separate from her lunch and easy for her to get to. Snack time is at 10 am.

For her snack, she wanted yogurt and fruit. So I used the smallest container from the nesting food containers. The night before, I put some plain yogurt in the container and popped it in the freezer. In the morning I put chopped strawberries and drizzled grade b maple syrup on top. I'm assuming it will be nicely chilled but thawed when she is ready to eat it. I really love these bamboo sporks!

You can see the frozen yogurt below the maple syrup:

For lunch (11:30 am) she requested 1/2 a cheese sandwich and 1/2 a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich. In her cheese sandwich, I used shredded raw cheddar cheese, grapeseed veganaise and arugula on gluten-free bread. I used a two-tier tiffin.

I packed the other half sandwiches in my 3 year old's tiffin while we are out and about today.

On the lower container, I put white peaches, celery sticks, red grapes and half of a cheese string. Again, this was all her idea.

I made these cloth baggies, similar to the fold over sandwich baggies in the 70's, remember them? I put some some cashews and rice crackers it it. Something a little more crunchy and savory for her.

I froze 1/2 cup of water in her kleen kanteen overnight and filled up the rest with water so it stays cold when she's ready to drink. One of her (too small for her) pink socks work really well to absorb condensation on the water bottle.

Here is her lunch with snack before I packed it in her tiffin bag. Her nesting container fits perfectly on top of her tiffin and I'm still able to tighten the drawstrings.

Hopefully she'll let me get more creative with her lunches as she gets used to going to school!

*not shown is the weelife lunch note I added to her tiffin bag that says: Have a good day! I <3 U!

Love the ideas! And the little sock on the kleen kanteen is a fantastic idea... we've been having problems with G's thermos and I usually wrap it with his napkin - now to find a nice enough sock...hahaha.